A recently developed method of feeding livestock entails filling long plastic bags with fodder and feeding the stock from this bag over an extended period of time. Bags used for this purpose are often at least 4 feet in diameter and from 30 to 150 feet in length. Filling bags of this type with particulate or shredded fodder is difficult to quickly and effeciently accomplish, largely due to the length of the bag. A technique widely used has entailed crumpling or wadding up the bag over much of its length, then gradually filling the bag from its closed end outwardly toward its open end, paying out the bag from its wadded or randomly folded portion as filling progresses.
More recently, efforts have been made to actually fold flexible tubes of the type described by hand in a way such that a series of pleats or folds are provided adjacent the open end of the bag, thereby facilitating a more regular and true payout of the bag as it is filled with fodder. Attempting to manually fold bags of the size described, however, has been extremely difficult and time consuming, and the folds usually do not run true and uniformly when this method is undertaken.